


your body is a war-zone

by defcontwo



Series: jaytim tattoo 'verse [1]
Category: Batman (Comics), Red Robin (Comics)
Genre: M/M, Tattoos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-10
Updated: 2013-07-10
Packaged: 2017-12-18 07:22:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/877145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/defcontwo/pseuds/defcontwo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Shockingly, my skillset is somewhat more diverse than blowing shit up and pissing you off.” Or: the one where Tim gets inked up and it's the best idea he's ever had.</p>
            </blockquote>





	your body is a war-zone

**Author's Note:**

> for examples of what Tim's chosen design looks like, [here you go](https://www.google.com/search?site=&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1280&bih=659&q=aperture+tattoo&oq=aperture+tattoo&gs_l=img.3..0l4j0i5l2.1224.3289.0.3529.15.13.0.2.2.0.133.1150.9j4.13.0...0.0.0..1ac.1.17.img.jWg9_T7DKpk#imgdii=_)!
> 
> everything I know about tattoos, I know from watching lots of other people get them and also the Internet, so uh. apologies for any mistakes, please feel free to let me know.

It's not a pastime that he likes to indulge in often. And it is an indulgence, that much Tim knows. One that he tries not to spend too much time on because this is the sort of thing that could actually drive him over the edge one day. 

But every once in awhile, he'll take the time to space out a little. He'll take the time to wonder what his life could have been if things had been different, if he'd never had Robin. 

(If his father was still alive. If his mother was still alive. If Jason had never died. 

If, if, if). 

He tries to guess at what school he might have gone to, what his major could have been. His father had wanted him to go to Harvard and go into business, something profitable and solid and safe, but if there's one thing Wayne Enterprises board meetings have taught him, it's that business bores him to tears. 

What if his life had swung a left instead of a right? Does he end up as a different person entirely, a different job, a different group of friends? A nine to five job and a body unblemished by scars? 

Maybe that’s what starts it, in the end, the thread that tugged at this idea that’s been itching at him for weeks now. 

He wants - he wants something permanent, to be marked so that he can look down and remember where he came from and everything he's been through. His body is littered with scars but a tattoo, black ink bleeding into his skin - that's something he would have control over, a conscious choice rather than a reminder of all the times he's fucked up. 

Tim sits at his kitchen table, nursing a mug of lukewarm coffee and clicking idly through a series of images on a Google search and halfway to reaching for his sketchbook, when Jason sneaks up behind him, low voice suddenly too loud and too close. 

"Hey, Drake, I've got that information you asked for - woah, planning some late teenage rebellion?" 

“Jesus, _Jason_ ,” Tim says, slamming his laptop shut. “Don’t you knock?” 

“No, because I was raised in a barn,” Jason drawls, pulling up a chair backwards at Tim’s kitchen table and straddling it. “Did you want the info on the drug cartels or are you just gonna squawk at me some more?” 

Tim takes a deep breath and pinches the bridge of his nose. His working relationship with Jason has leveled out to something that mostly resembles civility. He would even go so far as to say that he’s learned to trust Jason - he wouldn’t let Jason get away with letting himself into Tim’s apartment if he didn’t, but that doesn’t change the fact that Jason gets a real kick out of pushing Tim’s buttons. 

Well. They get a real kick out of pushing each other’s buttons. Tim can admit that much. 

“The info, please.” 

Jason digs a usb stick out of a pocket inside his leather jacket and tosses it onto the table. Tim re-opens his laptop and sticks the usb stick into the port, and waits for it to load. The image search is still open and visible in a window on his computer, but he carefully doesn’t look at it while he checks out the information Jason brought him. 

“You’ve worked out this code?” 

“Yeah. It’s a list of street names in Gotham, right? At first I thought maybe, I don’t know, it could be a list of operation bases. But there are too many of them. If you pick out the fourth letter in every street name, it gives you the address where the exchange is gonna be.” 

Tim hums, eyes flicking quickly through the list of names and committing them to memory. It’s not all that complicated but he’s impressed nonetheless. Jason’s saved him some extra time cracking this so he can take care of the case tonight. He’s been working after this drug cartel for months now; it’s a relief to finally know that the break has come, that he can finally lay it to rest. 

“Thanks, Jason,” Tim says, saving the information to his desktop and wiping the usb clean. He ejects it and slides it across the table and makes as if he’s about to get back to work, but Jason just keeps sitting there, fidgeting at his table. 

“Did you want something?” Tim asks pointedly, raising an eyebrow in the other ex-Robin’s direction.

“Why are you looking at pictures of aperture tattoos?” 

Tim clenches his jaw in annoyance. Jason Peter Todd, like a dog with a bone on his best days. Tim should know better than to assume that Jason would just let it go. “It’s just an idea I’ve been working through. Just, you know. It’s not like I can really go through with it.” 

“Why not?”

Jason is looking at him, gaze serious and intent, and he gets like this sometimes, he drops the smart mouth and Tim never knows what to do with Jason when he’s like this. 

“Tattoos are an identifying mark, it’s against Bat code, I know you know that.” 

“And I know that you know you’re good enough at this point that that’s a bit of an irrelevant argument. You’re not an amateur, Drake, you can make your own code.” 

Tim shrugs half-heartedly. “Even then, the risk of letting some random tattoo artist see all of my scars and start asking questions isn’t worth it. Shirt goes off and the cat’s out of the bag.” 

Jason is quiet for a minute, long enough that the seconds start to drag on and Tim really has no idea where this conversation is going, but then Jason rolls his shoulders forward, as if making a decision. “I can do it for you, if you want.”

“You can _what_?”

Jason looks away out the window, studiously avoiding Tim’s gaze and that’s a sure sign that he’s feeling self-conscious, an obvious tell that Tim wonders if he should feel privileged to know. “When I was a kid, you know. Before when my mother was still alive. Well, you know she wasn’t really all there, I guess, so I used to hang out at the tattoo parlor below our apartment. The guys who worked there would teach me stuff? And then for a while, when I was between training missions or whatever for Talia, I spent a summer in Hamburg working with this woman. Uh, Franka was her name, I worked at her shop. She taught me a lot. So yeah, Drake, you want this done, I can do it.” 

“You’ve got the equipment and everything?” 

“No, Timothy, I just offered because I felt like fucking with you.”

Tim gives him a flat look because hell if that wouldn’t that just be par for the course for them. 

Jason huffs. “Yes, I have the equipment; I use it sometimes to touch up my own tattoos,” he says, looking so much as if he’s not sure if he wants to punch Tim in the jaw or bolt out through the kitchen window. 

“You have - “ Tim’s brain short circuits a bit. 

It occurs to him only just now that while he has stitched up every other single member of the family at some point or another, Jason has never come to his door for so much as a bottle of Ibuprofen and it’s suddenly become a very important detail, that he’s never seen any part of Jason without his usual uniform of jeans and leather jacket on. 

“Uh, okay. Yeah. I mean, wait, you speak German?”

Jason levels Tim with a look that makes it clear that he’s probably wondering if maybe Tim’s been hit over the head one too many times this week. 

“Ja, natürlich. Shockingly, my skillset is somewhat more diverse than blowing shit up and pissing you off.” 

“Could’ve fooled me,” Tim says, and he smirks a bit at the expected eyeroll he gets in return. 

“Look, I’m busy the rest of the week but Saturday afternoon? I know you know where my apartment is, you sneaky little shit. Come around 2 and make sure to eat a good meal beforehand.” 

“Yeah, okay,” Tim says, nodding absently. 

Jason has ducked out through his kitchen window before he has time to fully process what exactly he just agreed to. 

\+ 

Tim stands outside the door to Jason’s apartment, the sketch of the aperture folded up in his jacket pocket. 

He checks the time on his watch: 1:58 PM. 

The door swings open and Jason leans against the door jamb. “You in or out, Timothy?” 

Jason always has this look about him, like he’s halfway to challenging Tim to _something_ even if he’s not quite sure what that something is. It’s the sort of look that makes Tim want to step up and show him what’s what, the look that makes Tim bite back and then some whenever they fight. 

The stupid fucker is probably doing it on purpose but Tim falls for it anyways, every time. 

“In. Can we get on with it?” 

Jason gestures to the couch, where the equipment is already set up on the coffee table. “Take a seat, kid.” 

Tim rolls his eyes. “You do realize that I’m 19, right. That’s only two years younger than you.” 

“I can go to the supermarket and buy my whiskey like a big boy, _kid_ , pretty sure that gives me superiority.” 

“Whatever, you don’t even drink,” Tim mutters to himself, perching carefully on the edge of the couch and pulling the piece of paper with his sketch on it out of his jean pocket. 

“I like to put music on when I do this, so if you have a problem with the Clash - well, I’ll probably just ignore it.” 

Tim laughs in spite of his nerves. “What am I, Alfred?” 

Jason shoots him a grin that makes Tim’s stomach clench a little as he sits down on top of the coffee table across. “All right, lay it on me.” 

Tim hands over the piece of paper, edges ragged from where he’d torn it out of his sketchbook. He modified it himself, adding his own creative touches, and he finds himself suddenly nervous. He’s never actually shared anything he’s drawn or made with anyone else, at least not since the last time he proudly showed off one of his more innocuous photographs to Mrs. Mac. 

Jason nods thoughtfully. “Looks good. This because of that whole photography thing?” 

Tim gives a tight nod. “Uh, yeah.” 

I don’t want to forget how I got here, I always want to remember where this all started from, Tim thinks, a mantra that’s been circling his mind for days now, but the words get stuck in the back of his throat because this is something too personal, and him and Jason, they don’t exactly do personal. 

Jason hums, gazed fixed firmly on the sheet of paper. “Figured as much. Okay, just let me draw up the transfer.” 

Tim makes a skeptical sound before he can stop at himself but Jason just huffs at him. “You’re not the only one in the family who’s allowed to have some measure of artistic talent, jackass.” 

“You’ve seen Dick’s costume designs over the years, you can imagine why I thought I was the only one.” 

Jason snorts. “You’ve seen the first version of that costume, right? The one that makes him look like disco vomited all over it?” 

“I still have nightmares about it,” Tim deadpans. 

“I thought he was the biggest tool when I met him for the first time in that costume.”

“You _still_ think he’s the biggest tool.” 

“Well, yeah,” Jason says, shrugging a bit, “but now for completely different reasons aside from his sartorial choices.” 

It’s an easy trap to fall into, only seeing Jason as what he wants you to see him as. Reckless, that’s one. Careless, there’s another. But there’s something intense about the way Jason looks as he works on the transfer, about the way he barely pauses even as he has to blow a strand of his own curly hair out of his eyes. It makes Tim’s stomach do a backflip or two and yeah, it’s not like he hasn’t thought about Jason like this because he has, in passing. It’s always been a brief thought, the sort of thing that he’d entertain for about a minute before striking it as absurd but now. 

Now he’s thinking about it a whole lot. 

“Done,” Jason announces, tearing Tim from his thoughts. “What do you think?” 

It looks perfect, Tim thinks. 

“You’re not half bad,” is what he says because this is comfortable for him, falling back on their usual needling. 

“Where do you want it?” 

Tim pulls up his shirt a bit and gestures to a space just above his hip bone on the right. “Right about here.” 

“Easier to hide there, huh?” 

“That’s the idea.” 

Tim lies down on the couch and tugs up his shirt a bit, as Jason moves in with the transfer. Tim has the sudden epiphany of just how close Jason is going to have to be to do this and he swallows hard. 

“Do you mind if I...?” Jason asks, gesturing towards Tim’s jeans. Tim reaches down and unbuttons his jeans and tugs them and his briefs down just enough. 

“All right, we’re about set,” Jason says, reaching for a pair of plastic gloves and disinfectant to wipe down and swab the area around Tim’s hip bone. Jason’s movements are brisk and professional as he sets the transfer but Tim’s skin still tingles everywhere he touches, and Tim swears to himself fiercely. 

_Tim, old chum,_ he thinks, _you did not think this through at all._

“This is the part where most normal people get warned that it might hurt a bit at first but since it’s you - “ 

“Can’t be any worse than anything else I’ve been through,” Tim finishes for him. 

“Right. Onwards, Red Robin,” Jason says. 

“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” Tim asks, one last time, because he has to. 

“If you ask me that again, I’m going to stab you with this,” Jason says, before getting to work. 

It does hurt at first but it’s a good sort of hurt, and even then, that fades leaving behind a combination of good hurt and pleasure that makes Tim’s toes curl a bit and his brain go in some very interesting directions that aren’t helped at all by Jason’s proximity. 

He is suddenly horrifyingly aware of the fact that he’s hard and there is absolutely zero way of hiding that fact, not in this situation. The fact that Jason is ignoring it is even worse; he would have thought this would be prime teasing material, front and center, but Jason’s just letting it go. 

Well. There’s a first time for everything. 

Tim breathes in, one, two, three, breathes out, falling back into his old routine of meditative breathing and makes himself focus on the beat of the music in the background, finds himself mouthing the words and it forces him to relax, to settle himself. 

Tim completely zones out, so lost in the music that he doesn’t even notice when Jason finishes and sets the gun and ink aside. Tim blinks open his eyes and stretches, cramped limbs shaking out pins and needles and it takes a second for him to really get it, to get that Jason is right there, close enough to touch and isn’t that funny, that he’d never quite realized that Jason’s eyes had that much green in them. 

“I’m finished,” Jason says, and his voice sounds a little hoarse for reasons Tim doesn’t really want to spend too much time analyzing. “Let’s take a look.” 

Tim sits up carefully and looks down at the tattoo, the bold black ink of the aperture a sharp contrast against his pale skin before Jason covers it up with a bandage. “It’s, uh. It’s great. Actually, it’s really great.” 

Jason smiles and it’s a little bit shy and a whole lot pleased. It’s not a look that Tim thinks he’s ever seen on him before, at least not in years, and not without the aid of a camera lens. “Anytime, Drake. You ever want another one, you know where to find me.” 

Tim shakes his head. “Nah, I think it’s just the one for me.” 

“Statistically, most people don’t stop at one,” Jason points out. 

“I’m not most people.” 

Jason pulls a face at him. “Yeah, no kidding, you goddamn spoiled brat. All right, get out of my apartment.” 

Jason reaches for a container of lotion at the end of the table and tosses it at Tim to catch. “I’m sure you’ve been completely anal about this and researched everything you need to do after, so I’m not gonna waste my breath.” 

Tim stands up and he’s a little dizzy from the exertion and from lying down for so long but he manages to orient himself. “Got it. Thanks. I mean. It’s not like I don’t know that you really didn’t have to do this.” 

Jason’s hunches forward a little, shoving his hands into his jean pockets. “Whatever, Drake. It’s been awhile since I’ve done any work on anyone other than myself, maybe I just wanted the practice.” 

“Yeah, all right.” 

Jason walks him to the front door and they pause a little, lingering awkwardly in the open doorway.

“I’m gonna go.” 

“Kinda wish you would,” Jason says. 

Tim walks briskly away and pretends not to notice that he doesn’t hear the slamming of the door shut, that Jason must have watched him as he walked all the way down the hallway to the elevator. 

He really didn’t think this one through. 

\+ 

It’s been three weeks. 

The skin around and beneath the tattoo has long-since healed completely, and now that the aftercare part of the process is over and done with, the permanence of what he’s done really hits him. Some part of him was afraid that he’d regret it but Tim finds that he really, really doesn’t. 

He’s eyeing his tattoo in the bathroom mirror, fingers coasting gently over the skin, when he hears a thumping noise and the sound of his name called from the direction of his living room. 

“Yeah?” Tim calls out. “I’ll be right out.” 

Tim doesn’t move, assuming that it’s just Dick, probably, because they’ve been texting all morning and they keep making promises to hang out more but then the bathroom door is pushed all the way open and Jason barges right through. 

“Hey, I just wanted to see how the tattoo looks now and - oh. Uh,” Jason says, stopping short at the sight of Tim, shirtless, looking at his tattoo. “It looks good.” 

“It does,” Tim says. 

Jason crouches down to get a closer look and leans out a finger to ghost it over the design. Tim shivers with the motion; there’s a tension in the air and it’s just like it was three weeks on that couch, like a wire wrapped around too tight, just waiting to snap. 

“Healed okay?” 

“Yeah,” Tim says, and it’s a miracle he didn’t croak that out. 

“Hey, Tim?” 

“Yeah?”

“I’m gonna do something and if you don’t want me to, now would be the time to let me know.” 

“No, uh. You’re good. Blank cheque, go for it, good,” Tim says, and he’s glad he did because Jason leans forward and presses his lips to the design, lets his tongue trail the edges of the tattoo until Tim’s hips start to stutter forward and he’s white-knuckling the bathroom counter for support. 

Tim fists a handful of Jason’s flannel shirt and drags him up into a kiss that is mostly teeth until they stop, the sound of their combined breathing harsh in Tim’s ears, and Jason maneuvers them so Tim is on the bathroom counter with Jason between his legs and the angle is just right when Jason licks his way into Tim’s mouth. They stay like that for several minutes - Tim thinks he could stay like that for several hours, exchanging kisses that are a little sloppy but so, so good, the intensity of it overwhelming his senses.

But. 

“I’ve got a bedroom, you know,” Tim says, breaking away just long enough for Jason to start sucking kisses into his neck, biting at the tender skin and probably leaving bruises in his wake that Tim’ll have to cover up with a suit tomorrow at work. 

“That so.” 

“Yup. It’s just beyond that door, even.” 

“How convenient,” Jason says, before tightening the grip that Tim’s legs have around his waist and picking him up and carrying him through the door into the bedroom. 

“Have you done this before?” Jason asks, as he deposits Tim on the bed and follows him down, a solid warmth pressing Tim into the mattress. 

“Yeah.”

“With a guy?” 

“Yup,” Tim says, before hooking a leg around Jason’s knee and switching positions so he’s on top, shifting over so that he’s straddling Jason’s waist. 

Jason huffs a laugh. “Looks like there’s a demand for the creation of the queer Robins club.” 

“Can we have buttons,” Tim says, reaching down to tug Jason’s shirt up and off. “I could make buttons.” 

“Hey, you’re the one setting the budget for the club, rich boy, I’ll just show up and look pretty,” Jason says and Tim laughs, and that’s something he didn’t expect. He spent a lot of time in the past three weeks thinking about this but everything in his fantasies had been a little too intense, too serious, but now he’s laughing again as Jason’s arms get stuck in his shirt sleeves, and the reality is far better than anything he could have thought up. 

Jason has scars everywhere - far more than Tim has. Maybe far more than any of them has, even Bruce. Most of them look like they’re probably from the Joker but the rest just look like the regular wear and tear of the urban vigilante life and well, maybe Jason lives that life a little harder than the rest of them. A bullet wound here, a scar from a stab wound there. 

But woven in between the scars, dark against the white, are tattoos. There are intricate floral designs, set in bright reds that are like streaks of blood across Jason’s shoulder. There are neat, contained geometric designs in deep, black ink that Tim itches to trace and over the other shoulder, the shape of a map that Tim would know anywhere, Gotham’s underbelly clear and stark against skin. 

“You didn’t do all these yourself.” 

Jason reaches out and places a thumb over Tim’s tat and traces it absently. “No, I didn’t. The ones on the front, I touch up myself, but most of it Franka did. It was my payment for helping her out. Not like I had a trust fund she could deposit money into.” 

“How did you explain away your scars?” 

“I didn’t,” Jason says, quiet, before curling a hand around the nape of Tim’s neck and pulling him down into another kiss. “Now, are you gonna fuck me or not, rich boy,” he says, words like an electric shock to Tim’s system, and Tim grins, sharp and intent, and leans over to rummage around in the bedside table drawer for condoms and lube. 

“Take off your pants, Mister Todd.”

“Sir, yes, sir,” Jason says with a jaunty salute before tugging off his jeans and throwing them halfway across the room, and of course he wasn’t wearing anything underneath, the bastard. 

Tim pours a liberal amount of lube over his fingers as he slings one of Jason’s legs over his shoulder, pressing a kiss to the inside of Jason’s thigh as he starts to stretch him. It’s tempting, he thinks, with Jason’s cock right there, to stop what he’s doing and swallow him down and find out just how loudly he can make Jason swear. 

“Christ, Drake, I’m not gonna break, you can go a little faster here.” 

“If you’re gonna go back to my last name again, I can take as long as I want, _Jason_.” 

“Fucking, _Tim_ , oh Jesus,” Jason says, letting out a throaty moan. “I’m good, I’m good, would you just fuck me already.” 

“I didn’t hear a please anywhere in there, Jay.” 

“Go fuck yourself, Timothy.” 

“Maybe another time,” Tim says, even as he withdraws his fingers and rolls on the condom. He has an idea, suddenly, realizing that there must be more tattoos on Jason’s back. “Hey, turn over. Is that okay?” 

“Yeah,” Jason says, turning over onto his stomach, and Tim was right. He could spend days like this, he thinks, mapping out every tattoo where it intersects with scarred flesh. He fucks into Jason slow and deep and he doesn’t know what this is, if this is a one time thing or if he’ll get the chance to take his time with all that ink and skin, so he takes what he can get when he can get it. 

“If you don’t start going faster, I’m going to actually kill you,” Jason breathes out. 

“You’re pretty fucking bossy, has anyone ever told you that.”

“The fact that you don’t see the irony in that statement coming from you is just - oh fucking shit goddamnit _Tim_.” 

Tim can only curve a smile into the broad expanse of Jason’s shoulders. 

\+ 

After, they lay collapsed in a pile of sweaty limbs, Tim running a hand lazily along Jason’s back, tracing the designs. 

“We should do this again some time,” Tim says, and maybe he thought that he’d be nervous saying that but it just comes out, as naturally as everything else. 

“What, getting inked or the sex?” 

“Both?” 

“I fucking knew it,” Jason crows, and Tim rolls his eyes and smacks him on the ass. “You know, you’re a real piece of work, Tim Drake.” 

“I think,” Tim says, “that that’s exactly what you like about me.” 

“Whatever, asshole,” Jason grumbles, but he says it like he knows it’s true. 

They always did get a real kick out of pushing each other’s buttons; they can admit that much.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] your body is a war-zone](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6448300) by [reena_jenkins](https://archiveofourown.org/users/reena_jenkins/pseuds/reena_jenkins)




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